For longtime Western Carwash Association conferees, the organization’s 2009 convention and tradeshow in Las Vegas means a return to a familiar neighborhood. For many years, until 1998, the WCA’s annual show took place at the Tropicana. This year, the event is housed across the street at the MGM Grand and runs from Monday, October 5 through Wednesday, October 7. This year’s show carries the tagline “Build on Your Strengths.”

What regular visitors to the show will find wholly unfamiliar is the programming. This year, everything is new and different. In the past, day one was dedicated to separate educational programs for self-service and conveyor operators; day two given over to association business, keynote address, and exhibits; and day three featured exhibits only. To kick off the 2009 event, the association has teamed up with the Disney Institute to bring attendees a professional development program in the Disney tradition on day one. The program is designed to impart Disney’s simple solutions on quality service and customer loyalty, to share success stories with operators, and to give operators the tools to adapt those successes to their own operations.

Dual-track — self-service/conveyor — education moves to day two and three. In another innovation, these educational programs will be offered right on the trade show floor and, in a departure from previous years, are scheduled concurrently with exhibit hours. This setup allows attendees to effortlessly move from seminar to exhibit and back to seminar with minimal waste of time.

The MGM Grand is a premier resort hotel. It is also home to one of the stops on the Las Vegas monorail system, which puts it in easy reach of most local attractions. Close by, it is neighbor to New York, New York (across the street); Excalibur (diagonally across the street, with Mandalay Bay and Luxor a little further along); and for those filled with nostalgia, there is always the Tropicana.

For more information, visit www.wcwa.org or call the Western Carwash Association at (800) 344-9274.